


winter's kiss

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Låt den rätte komma in | Let the Right One In (2008)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Bullying, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, First Kiss, Gen, Memories, Mercy Killing, Orphans, Propositions, References to Shakespeare, Sharing a Bed, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Vampire Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of them can only go out at night, and the other can only be himself when he's alone.</p><p>One of them is so tired of the world, and the other is slowly learning to dislike every other person out there, except for a very few people.</p><p>One of them is a centuries-old vampire in a teenager's body, and the other is a scrawny weedy thin boy.</p><p>This is what happens when they meet.</p><p>(Birthday present in several bits and pieces for the amazing luninosity!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).



> The roots of this fusion lie in the Steve/Bucky dynamic from the MCU Captain America movies and the Oskar/Eli dynamic from the original Swedish canon for Låt den rätte komma in. 
> 
> This is a rather looser adaptation, following bits and pieces of each canon's high points and working in important lines or scenes.

JAMES 

Even in the dead of the night - the watch that ticked heavily in its pocket, on the end of a polished and many-times-repaired chain, was even now counting the minutes past two in the morning - the city was still full of restless relentless movement. Such a far cry from candle-lit streets and the pervasive stench of horse droppings and human sweat.

What was this place called in the present day? He could remember its names, the foolish hopes and the fleeting lives of one set of newcomers after another, hard on each other’s heels, nipping and baying and full of themselves, names upon names, harping upon the word _new_ , as though it actually meant anything.

There was no such thing as _something new_ , the boy thought. Even his very thoughts were weary, crushed down, and the missing night sky afforded him no relief. Instead of stars, he looked up into the glitterflash of colors from thousands of moving pictures. Moving pinpricks in the muddy dark, no sign of familiar wheeling constellations. 

All he could find was avarice and empty smiles and meaningless combinations of words.

So nothing much had changed since he’d gone to sleep, despite books full of war and death and waste and loss.

Red light, out in the distance, and a familiar face.

The boy cocked his head to the side, and permitted himself a close-lipped smile.

This, this was something he knew. Something he was familiar with. Looming large as though it were low-hanging fruit, overripe and waiting to be plucked. A moon like drying blood, with its empty seas and a so-called Ocean of Storms.

The wind called to him, and he heard in it the voices of people in pain.

The thought of it made him bare his teeth.

He tipped his head back, took a deep breath of the world, of the city, as it sprawled out beneath him. The smells of river and harbor and salt, the garish colors, the absent sky - and beneath that, propelling the constant tide of movement and violence at his feet: the pulse.

Blood rushing through the veins, hot pulse, life itself on the move.

 _Sustenance,_ the boy thought, and, pleased, he said the word out into the wind. “Sustenance.”

He looked over his shoulder. The rooftop was empty, except for him, and the door that gaped open, that would not shut properly, despite the insistent push of the wind. Wasted effort.

There was something in the door’s way. A crumpled shape, vaguely person-shaped. 

The boy licked his lips. He could still taste copper on his tongue. He could feel the borrowed flutter of life in his body: a temporary surge of energy, of ability, the drive to stay awake.

The need to _hunt_.

He smiled, and _thought_ about his own back, and the shirt he was wearing gave way in the sudden onrush of sinew and muscle, painless powerful flash.

His shadow lengthened and grew and changed, and the boy pulled one of his wings forward, ran a critical eye over the bones and the veins. A handsome limb. Useful.

Again that waft, that reek, that unmistakable _drug_. 

The boy smiled, ran his hands through his dark hair, and closed his eyes. 

Fell forward, into the night.

///

STEVE

The others were still laughing, still making all kinds of terrible puns about his last name, and he gritted his teeth and flung himself up the stairs.

Scant shelter. One of the few doors that actually locked. The rooms on the top floor were arranged any old how, cubbyholed and kitty-cornered and clustered awkwardly together. Some of the rooms were shared and some of the rooms were only just large enough for just the one bed.

He didn’t even really have a bed in his, but it had a door that he could close, and for good measure he dragged a chair from one of the neighboring rooms and propped it up as best as he could beneath the doorknob. He didn’t really know how that worked yet - he was going to have to ask one of the kids in his science classes to explain it more completely to him - but it would have to be enough, for now.

He could close the door and lock it and put the key underneath the worn flat cushion that served as his pillow, and he could huddle in the corner of the room and try to remember how to breathe.

If only the woman who used to sit at the head of the long dining table were still here. She would be able to find out where the other boys had learned such rude language. She might not have been able to stop them picking on him, but she would have been kind.

He could remember her face, but not necessarily her name.

He had a tiny little window, spiderwebbed with cracks and dust, and on its sill he kept his satchel. How heavy it was. He got tired so easily. His shoulders shook and he wondered if he would ever look right: he was scrawny. He never had much of an appetite. He couldn’t chase after the others.

But he _was_ good at hiding, and he liked to hide in the dimmest corners, the places where there was always just enough light for him to see by.

There was a very small lamp beside the heap of blankets and mismatched quilts that he slept in, and by its pale faint light he could see his own hand and his own lines, the faces he remembered and the ones he’d made up. Charcoal, smudge and shade, and the pretty paper with its pleasant texture under his fingertips.

Here was the woman and the dark lines of her rare smiles. She always looked like she was deep in thought, even when she was making music, standing next to a window with a battered and beautiful violin raised to her shoulder.

“May I sketch you, miss?” He’d asked her to sit for him. Just once. A winter’s night, when everyone else was huddled together next to one of the bigger fireplaces. She hadn’t been in that room, he remembered, and he’d braved the rest of the house and the bitter cold just to find her - and then she’d just been next door. A candle guttering next to her, the only source of light she used when she could easily turn on the overheads, and a piece of paper marked with orderly groupings of lines.

“Of course,” had been her reply. Her low quiet voice, small in the roar of the snowstorm.

That night was in his sketchbook. The last time she’d smiled at him. She had left the house soon after. His last memory of her had been of her skirt fluttering in the wind, and the suitcases stacked next to her feet, as she stood on the sidewalk below and waited patiently for a taxicab.

He couldn’t remember her name.

///

JAMES

In the daytime he slept.

At night, he’d step out into the world.

He could see his own faint outlines in the frosted glass, now, and he turned his head from side to side, trying to see if the part in his hair was still straight, if the buttons in his shirt were still holding. 

If they came loose he could ask his - companion - to look after them for him.

He pushed and pulled at his cuffs, wanting them to look just right.

“You’re pretty,” someone said behind him.

He raised an eyebrow, and waited until the last possible moment before turning around. “Am I?” he asked. “And what do you mean by _pretty_?”

“Pretty, like, I could give you fifty dollars and you could suck my cock,” said the man. A smudge of something red just below his ear. Crusted grime on his hands. Ragged, ripped trousers.

“Fifty dollars,” he said, slowly, rolling the words around on his tongue, dashing them against his teeth. “That’s too low, wouldn’t you think?” 

The stained man frowned. “You want more money?”

He shrugged, fractionally, one shoulder moving, just. “Yes.”

“Go fuck yourself,” the stained man said.

He watched that shambling progress, up the street and then around the nearest corner. A final glance in the glass before he slipped off, following, reeling in those hesitant footsteps.

The stained man was mumbling and pleading and crying on a doorstep. Tears cutting clean trails through the dirt on his face. 

He licked his lips and came closer, soundlessly, and he was leaning over the man and whispering, “Forget her or him or whoever is here. Come with me.”

Moving away, moving deeper, and he heard the jerky footsteps behind him. His fingers twitching at his sides, and he smiled at himself. He thought of the strings on a puppet.

Three alleyways meeting. Stained brick and cracked asphalt underfoot. 

“Pretty dark in here,” the stained man said. 

“That’s how I like it,” he said. 

“Change your mind after all?” There was a smile in that shattered voice, now.

A smile that he countered with one of his own. “I’ll do what you want and you don’t even have to pay me.”

Lust sat awkwardly on the ragged lines of the stained man’s face. 

He bared his teeth in a not-smile of his own, and beckoned the stained man closer.

The kiss was full of stale breath and stained teeth and the stench of the streets. He waited for those things to pass. Waited for the stained man to go limp and pliable, until he could position the stained man as he wanted. A pretense of undoing his buttons, of crouching over him. Kisses trailing away from that terrible mouth. Dirt on the skin. Grime in the hair.

The pulse in the stained man’s throat. Speeding up. 

He focused on the copper, on the flowing hot rush. Bared his teeth. Nipped lightly at the Adam’s apple.

“Is that what you like?” the stained man asked.

“It’s what you like,” he said.

“It’s like you read my mind.”

“Really?” he lied.

And bared his teeth - the real points. Skin and muscle giving way. The gasps and moans turning into a thin scream. “No - stop - ”

He ignored the stained man. Licked carefully at the wounds and took in another mouthful of the blood. Alcohol, nicotine, and other things. The stained man tasted like neglect and corrosion and death. Blood on the way to rotting.

Better to take that resource now, while it was still useful. Better than letting it go to waste.

The stained man was no longer fighting him. No longer saying anything. There was a feeble lump in the trousers. He shrugged and bit into the next vein. He felt blood trickle from the corner of his mouth. Drained the man dry.

There was one more thing that needed doing, and with that stolen strength thrumming just beneath his skin, it was easy.

He braced all of his weight on his knees, on the shoulders, as the stained man gasped his last. Leaned down and held the man’s head firmly in both hands. A firm _twist_.

He licked his lips and got to his feet and the drugs in the stained man’s system were as nothing compared to the simple taste of blood on his tongue. Metal and harsh sweetness, burred and blurred around the edges.

He looked back, once, at the stained man, who would have been lying peacefully on his back if it hadn’t been for his head turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and tipped a hat he wasn’t wearing, and he put his hands in his pockets and strolled away.


	2. Chapter 2

STEVE

Someone was knocking on the door of the broom closet.

He put his hands over his mouth to stop the shock spilling out.

To make a sound was to invite trouble. He wished he could still the hammering beat of his heart. 

“Hey, it’s me,” the person outside the door said.

He shook his head. The voice did seem familiar, but he wasn’t going to move. Not when he was safe here. 

“I know you’re in there. You can come out now. The others have gone.”

He curled in on himself. There were several sore spots in the left side of his face. He tongued each tooth carefully in turn. One might be coming loose, he thought, anxiously; no, two. When would the doctor come, and when would he be able to actually explain what was going on?

When would anyone take the time to just _listen_ to him?

Everyone else told him to stand up for himself; everyone else except for the lady with the violin. Everyone told him to shout and to fight right back.

 _She_ said, “You can fight back if you feel that you have to. And you can shout for help, shout to show them you’re not afraid. Or you can run and hide. You decide. Not me, not those other children, and not even your friends. You decide what to do.”

And that was why he was here, with a scraped face and his satchel tucked safely between his aching ribs and the wall, with the handle of a broom pushed into the handles.

The voice outside the broom closet said, “You can stay in our room, later, if you’d like,” and then the footsteps were moving away.

He listened and waited for the silence to fill up the world outside the broom closet, and only then did he switch on the light inside. Shadows falling away, revealing bottles of cleaning fluid and shelves stuffed with rags, a corner with a stack of empty buckets, a whole mess of paint-splattered drop cloth. 

The broom closet was full of sharp smells like turpentine and wax, and after a while that sharpness faded away and he could breathe more normally.

At least he still had his things: his sketchbook, his charcoals, the booklet he’d checked out of the public library around the block.

It was still strange to think of _Romeo and Juliet_ as just a bunch of pages stapled together, when it had such an interesting story, and beautiful verses, and the familiar stupidity of people who didn’t know any better. 

_Then, window, let day in, and let life out._

Simple words, and a complicated sentence. He wished he could write beautifully; one of the younger girls could make the letters she wrote to her mother look like art. Though the sentence in and of itself was already lovely, he thought it would look nice, too, if it were written out the way that girl could do it.

He couldn’t write like that. His penmanship was shaky at best; he was good at holding on to his charcoals, but sometimes he couldn’t hold on as well to ordinary yellow pencils. Besides, they never wrote darkly enough to his liking.

Before he could stop himself he was turning to a fresh page in his sketchbook. Guidelines, and the handsome face of a man he’d seen in the movies, with lovely eyes and a surprisingly bright smile. Maybe the man was a little too old to play Romeo. It didn’t really matter. He had a wonderful voice, an interesting way of speaking.

As for Juliet, he could only think of the woman with the violin.

Charcoal stains on his fingertips, darkening, blurring out his bruises and the bits and pieces of his pain. He didn’t look up from the paper until he thought the faces he was drawing looked perfect. The man and the woman, facing each other, and he imagined the two of them saying those words together, though in the play only Juliet had been speaking.

He blinked.

Among the studies for the man’s face and the woman’s, tucked away into the corners of the sheet: another face, a completely new face. It wasn’t someone he’d ever seen or met or knew. A stranger. 

He blinked, and held that corner up to the light, and studied the face he’d created. Dark hair combed back from a wide forehead. There was something kind and at the same time something cruel about the tiny smile - something mysterious, he thought, as though there were a secret lurking just out of sight. 

The face of a boy, he thought, perhaps his own age, or a little bit older - but what about those eyes? Where had he seen a kid with eyes as old as _these_? How could the boy seem both vicious and sweet at the same time? No one he knew could have had eyes like these, and he wracked his brains, thinking about the movies he’d stayed up late for, the books he’d read.

He’d drawn an impossibility. Nothing more than a beautiful figment of his own imagination.

There was no one like that in the world that he knew - and even if there were, what would that person be doing, talking to him, the runt hiding in the corners?

He crawled into bed, and sleep overtook him - and so he fell asleep sitting up next to his window, one hand on the sill, his fingertips touching the cold glass.

In his dreams the boy with the dark hair and the old eyes was laughing, that terrible perfect face illuminated in cold cold light. 

///

JAMES

“Are you all right? I haven’t seen you in several days,” the stocky blond man said. Dark stubble creeping in around the edges of his jaw. A series of overlapping bruises. 

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself,” the boy said, and cocked his head. Outside, the street lights turned themselves on with loud sizzling sounds. “How can I trust you to look after _me_ if you’re not doing well?”

The edge of a large bandage stuck out of the blond’s left sleeve. “All right, all right, I’ll stay home and get bored, so I’m here when you get back.”

“You’re being dense on purpose. I will not limit your movements. I only _ask_ that you be sensible.”

“You sure picked the wrong man to be that.”

The boy did raise an eyebrow, this time. “Perhaps I did.”

Outside the window the clouds began to press down on the grays of the city, on the people skittering along the rutted roads.

After a moment the blond looked away, and looked like he was laughing. “I’m an idiot.”

The boy put his hands in his pockets. Made sure to stand up straight. He was much shorter compared to his companion, and much thinner - little more than skin and bones even though he had just left another cooling corpse behind. The man had such a young face to be surrounded by salt-and-pepper hair. He’d been - kind - after a fashion, had surrendered almost gratefully. Those kinds of meals were rare.

“I’ll be here,” the blond said, waving a hand. “I’ll order some pizza. Feed the neighbors’ dog, teach him how to play fetch. You go out and do what it is you need to do.”

The boy tried to smile. He knew the blond tended to look away when he showed his teeth. “Do what you want here. You know my conditions.”

The blond nodded. “I do. No one opens the door to your room. I guard it whether you’re there or not.” 

Out on the sidewalk, again.

The quiet of the brick and the alleyways and the rats scurrying down drains was suddenly broken by a _clang_ and a storm of jeering. Boys’ voices, boys’ insults, which amounted to - nothing, really.

But it was the answering whisper that stopped the boy in his tracks. Words that were almost lost in the laughter. The unmistakable dark edge of pain, and the even darker edge of futility in the form of determination.

The boy flitted towards the voice.

“I can do this all day,” said the dilapidated trash cans at the far end of the alleyway.

Thin wrists, trembling arms, a satchel that had seen better days, and a jacket that was already most of the way to losing its right sleeve - and yet the bruised boy with the blood-smeared face was getting to his feet, was putting his fists up.

Laughter, insults, pointed fingers.

Skewed collar, peel-stained knees, shoes that were more scuff than leather.

The scrawny boy stood his ground.

///

STEVE

He couldn’t stop himself from trying to cringe away, but at least he was still on his feet when the punch landed - he didn’t fall until then.

He held on to his things, to his sketchbook and to his nerve, and he covered his head and rolled himself into a ball, as best as he could, even though the kicks were already raining down.

“Stop,” someone said. 

What a voice that was: cold like the darkest and shortest night of the year.

More laughter. “You think you can stop us?”

“I know I can.” 

He envied the other boy that certainty, that voice that made him think of roots and deep holes.

“There’s one of you and there’s seven of us.”

“You know how to count,” the other boy whispered. “Good for you.”

“What did you say?” roared the largest boy. 

He closed his eyes against the punch that he could already see coming - 

But the next sound he heard was a sort of screech, high and strange, and he wasn’t in any more pain than he was already feeling. Shadows all around, still with shock.

He uncurled, stayed low to the ground, and clapped his hand over a surprised sound like a sob.

The other boy looked so neat and proper in his polished shoes and his - what were those called? Suspenders? - and his old-fashioned cap.

The same couldn’t be said for the bully that the other boy was holding up in the air by the neck: eyes wide and popping in terror. The unmistakable whine of someone getting ready to cry, and the equally unmistakable hiss of someone wetting himself.

The other boy made a fist with his free hand - wound up, ready to punch - 

He rocketed up from the sidewalk, groaning as he moved, and somehow he reached out and caught the other boy’s fist in both of his own hands. He still couldn’t help but gasp - the other boy was strong - 

“Hello,” the other boy said, and he looked up into night-dark eyes. “Are you - well?”

He nodded. “I heal quickly,” he lied.

“No, you don’t,” the other boy said with a smile, cold as icicles and just as sharp. “You’re lying.”

“How did you know?”

“I just do.”

“Will you let them go?”

“Why?”

He thought about it. “I’d rather talk to you and not have them around.”

“Now you’re being honest. I’ll do it. Just this once.”

He watched the other boy _throw_ the bully at the others. A heap of shocked sullen silence and squirming and sudden bruises. 

“Come near him again and I will know, and I will make you all understand just exactly what pain is.”

Footsteps, crying, retreat, and he was looking at his tormentors’ backs.

He turned to the other boy and couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice. “Could you teach me how to do that?”

“I can’t,” was the response, “for the simple reason that you cannot do what I do.”

“Um, okay,” he said. “And - thanks. For everything you just did.”

The other boy nodded, just a slow downward movement of his chin. “Don’t - mention it. That’s what you say, now, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, and he didn’t want to think about how strange the boy must be, if that meant that _strange_ was something bad, because there was nothing bad about this incredibly strong and incredibly cold boy - he was radiating ice, and looked so calm and so serious and so old. 

The other boy turned away, started for the street.

He followed.

The other boy said, “I will not protect you now.”

“I’m not asking you to protect me,” he told the other boy.

That got him a tiny smile, the kind that involved a closed mouth.

He walked at the other boy’s side until they came to a stand of trees, bare branches whispering close together. 

“I must go,” the other boy said.

“Wait, you haven’t told me your name yet,” he told the other boy.

“I was supposed to?”

“Can’t thank you properly without saying your name.”

The other boy raised an eyebrow. “You give me your name first.”

“Happy to.” He offered his hand as well. “Steven Grant Rogers. Call me Steve.”

“I am - James,” the other boy said. Something shook in his face, as though he were trying to remember something. “James Buchanan Barnes.” Long intervals between the words.

“Did you forget your name?” Steve asked.

“I think I might have,” James said.

Steve looked at him, trying to memorize him and the seriousness in his strange deep eyes.

“I must go,” James said again.

Steve nodded, and looked at his feet. “Yes. Okay. Um. Thank you, James. You - you were incredible, back there.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw James’s hand moving, James’s fingertips approaching his face. “You must get help for - your face.”

“I will,” Steve said. “Thanks. Really. I mean it.”

“I think you do,” James said, and then - and then he was walking away, into the night, and Steve wondered where he could be going. Home? Where was home for James?

He turned away, set his steps back in the direction of the house where he lived, the tiny room on the top floor - 

“Steve,” said a voice behind him, icy and familiar.

He turned around and stared, because James was just behind him again when he was sure he’d watched James disappear into the city. The streetlights were cold on his shirt and his cuffs and his neat collar. “I - what?” was all he could say.

“I would like to see you again.”

“Sure,” he said, quickly. “Here, tomorrow?”

“Back by the trees.”

Steve nodded hard, smiled, trying to show that he was looking forward to it. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

“Yes,” James said.

“Good night,” Steve said, and turned away again.

He looked back over his shoulder after twenty steps.

James was - gone. As though he had never been there, as though they hadn’t just been talking about seeing each other again. Nothing left of his presence on the pavement, not even the leaves he’d been standing on.

It was a very long moment before Steve could make his feet move again.


	3. Chapter 3

JAMES

The last golden rays of the sun were still reaching into the farthest corners of the tiny apartment when the boy rose from the sleep that conquered him in the daylight hours. He had to walk carefully around that light. Not even his clothes could protect him from that merciless blight and burn.

The stocky blond was sleeping spread-eagled on the floor next to the couch, and there was a skinny mutt curled up over the cushions.

The boy did his best to ignore the flowery soapy scent that clung to his skin, to his hair: some long-forgotten instinct had led him to rinse off the blood and then clean it off his skin, tiny bubbles clinging to his fingertips as he ducked his head under the cold water sputtering from the shower head.

He was only meeting - Steve. Just another person. A perfectly ordinary human being, thin and short-lived. If he did not bluster and did not coerce and did not walk around with greed in his eyes then he was an aberration, and one who would not last long. There were people like that, and they were forgotten and trampled and they never learned how to use the ones who sought to use them.

Why he agreed to this meeting in the first place he still doesn’t know.

He put on fresh clothes and considered tying his hair out of his face.

At dusk, the boy spread his wings.

Windows and doors flashed open and closed below him, and he looked into the hearts of a thousand existences: bickering children and sullen men and suffering women. Neglect and silence and cold.

It was, after all, no better than the world he’d known. Vague recollections of a little girl who clung trustingly to his hand, and a man with bright red hair, and endless hillsides carpeted thickly in endless shimmering white.

Beautiful, but sad. The missing and the shattered and the red-haired man’s tears. Not his father. He could remember that much. He had no mother, no father; they must have existed if he and the little girl were alive, but by the time that little girl was old enough to walk and talk they had long since passed out of his life.

Here and now: a flash of red hair in a window; a necklace with a black pendant.

The boy recognized the precious stone. Jet. The woman was mourning someone or something.

He stepped softly onto the landing outside her kitchen window. Knocked on the streaked cool glass.

The woman met his eyes, and didn’t scream. “Hello,” she said, in a whisper that cracked around the edges. “Would you like to come in?”

An invitation, unprompted.

The boy smiled, and nodded, and waited for the woman to open the window for him. He took care to avoid stepping on the potted plants on the sill. The kitchen was clean and every dish was chipped in some way, and some of the plates drying next to the sink looked like they had been broken and then put back together. 

“It’s nice to see a new face around here,” the woman said, politely, as she set cups and bowls out on the table. “Would you like to eat?”

He accepted a piece of bread and put it into his mouth. Chewed and pretended to swallow. It tasted like ashes and dust and the rough edges of the seeds baked into the crust. When the woman busied herself with the tea he coughed softly into his cupped hand, and held the chewed mass there.

“They told me I have two or three years left,” she said. “They gave me medicine. To help me sleep. To forget the pain. But I don’t want to forget. So it is very difficult to move, but I have to try.”

“I can help you,” the boy offered, using his gentlest voice. “I can make you feel better.”

“There isn’t anything anyone can do for me. Thank you, but - ”

“Just let me,” the boy said, and he slid off his chair and rounded the table towards her.

Pain in her eyes, in the lines around her mouth - pain and a fearful kind of trembling hope. He understood neither of those things, but he smiled to make her think he did.

“What do I need to do?” she asked, quavering.

The boy kissed her.

And at the same time he thought about his hand, about _changing_ his fingers. Lengthening, sharpening. 

“Close your eyes,” the boy whispered against the woman’s mouth. Watched her obey.

He drove his middle finger, tapering to a sharp thin point, into her heart. No resistance from her skin, her frail muscles. The point slipped between her ribs, into the vital pumping muscle.

“Thank you,” the woman whispered, wide-eyed.

“You’re welcome,” the boy said, and then he bent his head to the hole he’d made in her, and began to lap up the blood, in the last moments before life and warmth fled from her.

///

STEVE

He had to pause every few steps, had to fight for the air that couldn’t even fill up his lungs completely.

He put his hands on his knees, gasped, and looked over his shoulder.

No one was following him - at least, no one he knew.

If he could get to the trees, he thought, he’d be safe. 

He didn’t want to be late. He wanted to see James.

He forced himself to keep running, to keep going, and finally he saw the trees and the boy who was standing among them, who did not move. Who just kept looking up into the shaking branches.

James was so still.

“Can I draw you?” Steve asked, as soon as he passed into the circle.

“Is that what you do?” James asked. His hands were in his pockets. He wasn’t wearing his hat. His hair was tied back with a black ribbon, and his collar was a little crooked, and Steve couldn’t help but want to capture that angle between the cloth and James’s throat.

“When I’m not being picked on by everyone else, yes, that’s what I do,” he told James.

“Why do they pick on you?”

Steve laughed, but not at him. Pointed at himself. “I look like a weakling to them.”

“And yet you wanted to fight. You could have stayed down, and then they would have left you alone.”

“Not really.” Steve sat down on a protruding root. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sit, but he was tired, from the sneaking out and the running and his nerves. At least the tree could take the little weight he had. 

He watched James settle down on the cracked ground next to him. “You should fight back, Steve. The words will not be enough. You must act on those words.”

“And when I hit them they’ll laugh. I’ve tried,” he said, as he took out his sketchbook and charcoals.

“Then hit them again. And again. Over and over until they fall down, and stay down. Use a weapon if you must.” James was whispering, but the words struck Steve like a rhythm struck on a great drum, leaving him shaking and changed. “You are - capable - of something like this. Of standing up to them. Of fighting.”

“I don’t know how you can think that,” Steve said, finding himself whispering back. “We just met yesterday.”

“And we are meeting now, and I am learning a little more about you with every moment.”

He thought about that, and nodded. “So am I.”

“Do you have enough light, here, to draw by?”

Steve squinted at his paper. “I’ve worked in worse places. There was a broom closet, just a few days ago - ”

There was a hand on his shoulder, firm and powerful, and a sudden _pull_ , and he was on his feet and staring at James. “Come with me,” however, was all the explanation he got.

The apartment was small and nearly bare, full of lights turned down low. There were clothes strewn about the floor. Three rooms and a very tiny kitchen, and a door that was closed and marked with a black X.

Steve turned away from that door and followed James into a tiny bedroom. It was a lot like his, and it was a lot different at the same time. There was a bed, a camp cot of some kind, pushed up against the wall. It looked - new. Unused. 

“This is where you sleep?” he asked.

“After a fashion,” James replied. 

“You’re alone here?”

“No. My - guardian - will likely be back soon. You might want to start drawing, before then.”

Steve stared at James as he sat down at the head of the bed. Plain white pillows, and James’s black trousers. “You’ll let me draw you?”

James didn’t answer. Only nodded, once, looking very serious.

Steve scrambled for his sketchbook and charcoals. He squinted at James, laid in the lines for that serious face, and something about it made him feel that he’d done something like this before. Not the movements of drawing and examining his subject.

Details: the ribbon in James’s hair. The way he folded his hands together. The faraway look in his eyes. His downturned mouth. 

“You don’t smile very much,” Steve said as he concentrated on shading around the lines of James’s ear. 

“I don’t have many reasons to smile.”

“Okay.” 

When he finished the first series of sketches, James wordlessly held his hand out.

Steve swallowed, and passed him his sketchbook.

James was silent for what felt like hours, turning the page this way and that. 

“Sorry,” Steve blurted out, eventually.

“Why?”

“I’m not very good at this yet. I need more practice.”

“Then you’ll have it,” James said.

Steve looked up, shocked. “What?”

“We will meet again, and you will have more opportunities to practice,” James said. “Meet me at the trees, in three days.”

Steve nodded, speechless and grateful.

///

JAMES

On the second night, the boy went to the address that Steve had given him.

A house? No. The place was a bedlam. Too many children and not enough doors or windows. Too many running footsteps. The noise was endless and dulling. An excess of lights.

All except for one of the topmost windows: the light that shone from it was familiar, and dim, and before he could stop himself he was creeping closer, clinging carefully to the walls, so he could stand on the ledge.

He looked in. Touched the window, carefully, with the barest tip of his thumb. He didn’t make a sound.

Neither did Steve, who was sleeping on the floor, curled in protectively on himself even when he was - James thought - alone in the tiny room. The blankets should have obscured the shape of Steve, but he had pulled them all tight around himself, and James’s keen eyes could see exactly where his thin frame ended and the too-many, not-enough covers began.

He could see that Steve’s shoulders were shaking, just a little, just enough as to be almost imperceptible.

The clouds broke to reveal the moon: it was no longer a malevolent red eye. It was a strange mix of gold and silver, brighter around the edges.

On the other side of the wall, Steve frowned, and turned over.

James looked at the bruise on his face, too vivid, too dark. Too new.

He flattened his palm against the glass, and - blinked.

Steve was awake, and was looking at him, and there were equal parts surprise and a smile on his face.

The smile was fleeting, and it was replaced by a wince.

James said, slowly and clearly, “Say I can come in.”

He could easily read the word that Steve’s mouth shaped in turn: “What?”

He tapped his fingertips against the glass. “Say I can come in, Steve.”

He watched as Steve stumbled up to his feet - ill-fitting trousers, a shirt that fell off his shoulder - and stayed where he was as the boy wrestled with the window and heaved it open.

“Hello?” Steve said, questioning.

“Hello, Steve,” James said. “Will you let me in?”

Steve nodded, and moved out of the way. “Of course.”

Invited in.

It took him only a moment to enter the room. He closed the window carefully behind him.

Steve had wrapped himself up in one of his blankets and was sitting cross-legged on top of the rest. “How did you even get up there?”

James said, “I climbed.”

“Little bit impossible,” Steve said, only mostly under his breath. James heard every word, but said nothing. 

He stared at Steve until Steve blinked and leaned in and said, “Is there something on my face?”

“Yes. Who hit you?”

The answer to that was a shrug. “Someone from downstairs.”

“Did you fight back?”

“I couldn’t. They held my arms and my legs.”

James hissed, softly. Moved to sit carefully beside him. “Let me deal with them.”

“Please don’t.” Again that wince that was also a smile. “I’d rather - could you stay with me instead?”

James looked at him, and at his blankets, and an impulse made him take off his waistcoat and place it around Steve’s shoulders. 

“Thank you,” Steve said, and reached for his things. 

“Are you going to draw again?”

“No. I’m going to read.” A thin collection of pages in his hand, bound in plain blue cardstock with the words _Romeo and Juliet_ on the cover. “Have you read this?”

“I can read it to you,” James said, and he took the booklet and opened it to the page marked with a scrap of paper. “Scene Five in - ” He flipped back several pages. “In Act Three.”


	4. Chapter 4

STEVE

He woke with a start.

He was surrounded, and he was weighed down, and he wasn’t afraid at all.

The weight upon him was welcome and heavy, in a friendly way, though he wouldn’t really be able to explain why that heaviness felt like the presence of a companion rather than the usual presence of someone come to laugh at him, someone come to grind him down into the dirt yet again.

Mostly unmoving weight - until - 

This time he wasn’t the one who was shaking.

He wasn’t cold, not exactly, not with the blankets and the extra material pressed against his body.

Steve tried to look over his shoulder, and couldn’t - couldn’t make out his companion’s face. “James?” he whispered. “James, are you all right?”

No response.

He was skinny, and so he could turn around easily within all of the layers pressing in on him, and he bit his lip with alarm when he could see how James was hunched over - he seemed like he was in _pain_ , and the terrible grimace on his face wasn’t exactly helping -

Steve lunged for him, put his hands on James’s shoulders, started to shake him. “James,” he said, quietly, urgently. “James, it’s okay, I’ll do anything to make you feel better, please talk to me.”

Silence. James’s eyes focusing on him. Steve stared back at him, hoping he looked reassuring. “Come on, James, tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you.”

“You can’t help me,” James said. 

Steve frowned. “Why not?”

“Because I will not ask you for what I need to - to survive.”

“If you need something to eat, something to drink - I can get it from the kitchen, there shouldn’t be anyone around, I can sneak downstairs and come back up, it’ll be really quick - ”

“No, Steve!” 

Steve fell back into the blankets, and stared, and his voice wouldn’t work, and he had no idea what he was looking at.

Something was _wrong_ with the light in the room, because he thought that James’s eyes looked like vertical lines - like an angry cat’s - only James didn’t look angry because he looked desperate and nervous and like he would leave at any moment.

He reached out to James, and his hand was batted away - shock of pain, a sudden and instant bruise blossoming on his wrist, and he looked at the bruise and looked at James’s face and said, “James?”

“Don’t touch me, Steve, don’t - don’t follow - ”

Movement. Steve blinked. James moved so _quickly_ \- one moment, he was there on the blankets, and the next, he was already standing at the window, opening it, preparing to climb out.

Steve reached out for his shoulder. Made contact. “Wait! How are you going to get down from there - ”

Under his hand James went absolutely still. Absolutely quiet. 

He thought he heard James say, “Please don’t hate me.”

Only a thought, that, and one that might have been a mistake, because James hissed and glared at him and Steve did step away, his free hand clamped over his mouth. 

James’s teeth - 

Sharp. Points. Gleaming.

Monstrous teeth.

“James,” Steve said.

“This is me,” James said.

Steve watched, speechless, as James’s shirt fell off his shoulders - as the skin on James’s back rippled and changed and _turned into wings_.

Something in James’s face broke. His words, too, were a whimper: “I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”

And then - he fell out the window. He threw himself out.

Steve just barely stopped himself from shouting out his name. All he could do was rush to the window - just in time for the winged shadow that was James to fly up past him, to flap its wings into the night.

“Who are you,” Steve said, and he stood there for just a moment before -

Clothes. Shoes. James’s vest, which was far too large for him. Two more jackets on top of that. His satchel. The copy of _Romeo and Juliet_. 

He crept quietly downstairs with his heart hammering in his ears, and out the front door, and he was running, as fast as his thin legs could carry him, in the direction he thought he’d seen James fly.

///

JAMES

Past the tangle of man and dog on the couch, and through the door marked with the X, that only he had a key to. 

Hunger set its terrible teeth into every inch of his battered and trembling nerves, and began to gnaw, began to chew, and he could feel every movement, every drop of driving _need_. 

Flat on the floor, clenching his teeth so he wouldn’t moan, wouldn’t make a sound, wouldn’t feel the desperate urge to find someone, anyone, _anything_ that he could feed upon.

The chipped and stained bathtub on its none-too-steady legs loomed above him. It was empty now, as were the translucent plastic jugs in neat groups, clustered in the corners of the tiny bathroom.

Normally all of those things were filled with blood.

Normally he could come back here and rest in red, cocooned in life’s blood, drinking it in.

Steve wouldn’t have enough blood in him to fill one jug - 

“NO,” he said, and the word tumbled and roared in its echoes in the confines of the room, and he shook with need and shook with anger. How could he have thought - what kind of monster - he was a monster, he was something entirely unnatural, he was a cursed and wretched thing - but he could never do that, not to - that boy - 

Steve. Not a friend. Someone whose name he knew. Someone who smiled at him and smiled through layers of bruises and - smiled, when he saw James.

A damn long time since he’d been given a smile. 

He pushed the thought of Steve’s blood away, tried to bury it in the deepest corners of his mind, leaving only the endless aching hunger, bottomless and dark.

He was falling fast, and fading fast, and he only had enough strength to climb back into the bathtub, to cling to the dry cracked glaze and drop - 

A loud knock on the door. Someone calling his name.

He pried his eyes open. Everything was closing in on him, heavy, strange, drugging. “Come in,” he said, the words thick on his tongue.

“James,” said a familiar voice.

James smiled, or tried to, with his closed mouth and his muddled head.

///

STEVE

“How do we wake him up?!” he asked. He looked at his hands, at James collapsed into the empty bathtub, at the man and at the dog with its tail tucked between its legs. “We need to help him!”

“I - kid, do you know what he is?” the man asked.

“He’s something scary, and he might not be human,” was Steve’s prompt reply. “I don’t care. Right now he needs help. My help or yours. Tell me what he needs!”

“Tell me why you think he’s not human.”

Steve frowned, clenched his hands into fists. Kept looking at James, unmoving, as he spoke. “Teeth. Wings. His eyes. None of those look like mine or look like yours. Teeth like an animal’s, like a - ”

“Teeth of a vampire,” the man said, matter-of-factly.

The dog bared its own teeth, just for a moment, before bolting away with a yelp.

Steve couldn’t blame it for running.

He should do the same, should - do something, now that he knew what James was, now that he knew that James wasn’t human.

A _vampire_. So that was a real thing. He’d read stories, he’d heard the urban legends, and now he was standing over one. Why wasn’t he running?

Why did he still want to help?

The words fell out of his mouth. Steady. “I’ll give him my blood.” 

The man raised an eyebrow. “Not a good idea. He explained it to me, you see: if he feeds on you, he _has_ to kill you.”

“Why?”

“If he doesn’t kill the person he’s feeding on, that person will turn into a vampire, too. No exceptions. And obviously it’s not the kind of life he’d want anyone other than himself to have. I’ve offered. You don’t know angry until you’ve seen him angry.”

“I don’t care about him being angry,” Steve said, “I care about him being okay!”

“Good to know you care,” the man said. “And so do I. So we have to be smart, and we have to be careful, and find a way to help that isn’t stupid self-sacrificing, got it?”

Steve bit his lip. Kept his mouth shut. Thought about injuries and accidents and his own bruises and - “Hospitals. Blood banks.”

“It would be kind of strange to roll in and ask for a liter or two, kid.”

“They’d listen if it was me, since I look like I need it,” Steve pointed out.

The man raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re not actually suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“I know how to play dead. More important, I look like I don’t need to play dead.”

“You really think James is your friend, kid?”

“Yes.” He wanted to climb into the bathtub and hold James as James had held him just a few hours ago. He couldn’t take his eyes off James, who wasn’t moving. 

The man was putting on a jacket. “Let’s do this,” he said, and Steve nodded, took one last glance at James, and followed the man out the door.

Smoke and dust and sweat on the wind, and Steve looked up into the faraway moon and saw only a blank, uncaring face - then he pretended to faint, and the man half-pulled and half-dragged him into an emergency room. Bright lights, faces hidden behind masks, the prick of a needle in the crook of his elbow.

He could hear questions as if from far away, and he didn’t have to fake his slow and heavy movements, although it was worry that was making him feel that way and not any real pain.

A small bag lined with insulating material, and three more flexible pouches full of bright red O+ blood, and the man being shown how to change the bags out.

But as soon as they turned the corner Steve took the needle out of his arm, pinched the fourth pouch shut, the one connected to the needle he was still wearing, and started running. All the way back to the dog who was guarding the door between James and the rest of the world.

Steve tore the needle out with a hiss, then found a sharp knife. Held it and the pouch of blood in shaking hands, and managed to slash the container open - he barely missed nicking his own wrist, and that was not a good thing to be thinking about. He poured the dark red liquid onto James’s hand: the closest patch of exposed skin that he could find. A little at a time. He had to stare, fascinated, as instead of flowing off the blood seemed to stay on the skin as if caught and held fast, and then - it was _absorbed_ into James.

When the first pouch was empty, Steve said, “James.”

James shifted, and slowly, slowly sat up. Unfocused eyes. 

Steve cut the next container open and placed it into James’s hand, and watched as James raised the container to his mouth and began to drink directly from it. 

“Steve,” James said, after he drained the second bag.

“Talk later,” Steve told him, “finish everything first.”

“How much blood is there?”

Steve squinted at the label on the third bag. “Two hundred and fifty milliliters. There are four containers.”

After, Steve picked up the empty pouches and his needle, and put them all into the insulated bag, then turned back to the boy in the bathtub. “Do you feel better?”

“I will - survive,” James said. “For now.” Another pause. Steve looked into the bathtub and watched as James opened and closed his hands. “Thank you.”

“Thank the guy with the dog, too,” Steve told him. “He helped me get the blood.”

“He is my guardian. I will thank him.”

Steve squirmed on the floor. His backside was getting cold. “James. I know what you are. The man told me. And I saw you. When I woke up.”

“So you should be leaving,” he heard James say. “I am not good to be around. I am dangerous and strange and - ”

“I can only see you at night, or inside, where there’s no sun, right?”

“Yes.” He watched James blink. “I just said that I am not safe to be around.”

Steve blew out his breath in a huff, and tried to avoid being mean. “Do you think,” he asked, “that I live in a safe environment? This is New York City. I live in a group home. I get bullied. Nothing healthy about me. I’m already in a lot of danger.” 

James closed his mouth, and stared.

“Compared to everything else, being with you is safe.” Steve smiled, looked away, knew that he was going to blush. “I mean. You protected me. I don’t know much else about you, but - ”


	5. Chapter 5

JAMES

There was a drop of blood just at the edge of the nail on Steve’s left thumb.

He didn’t want to drink it; there was enough in him for now. He could hunt tomorrow. 

He wanted to rub the blood into Steve’s skin, and watch it be absorbed.

“I don’t know much else about you,” Steve was saying.

Steve’s face was open and honest and thin and flushed, and James reached out to touch one cheek, and it was a surprise that Steve didn’t flinch away from his touch.

“I want to know something about you,” Steve went on. “Are you old or young or - something?”

“Something,” James answered. “Will you come closer?”

He reached for Steve’s bony shoulder. They were almost nose to nose and only the bathtub was between them.

“Here I am,” Steve said.

“Here you are,” James agreed. And: “Do you really want to know who I am?”

“Yes, I do.”

James smiled. Leaned in. “Then be me a little.”

And he kissed Steve. Waited for him to close his eyes.

James let the thoughts and the memories flow.

_Long, long, long winters. A frozen river, curves in dark ice, the weak sun shattering on fresh-falling snow. A hand holding on to his, and the smile of the little girl in the red skirts. His sister. He could no longer remember her name._

_He couldn’t remember his mother’s face._

_A beautiful woman with honey-colored hair and strange dark eyes, a visitor, who was welcomed into every home but would not touch the food nor the drink that were offered to her. The jewels she gave away, reckless and heedless and laughing, pushing beautiful things into the work-roughened hands of the mothers. Even his sister received something: a green ring with pretty white lines, that seemed always cold to the touch._

_One day, the beautiful woman asked to see all of the children in the village. A night full of snow and howling wind. She asked if she could take one of the children away with her, so that she would have a companion on her journey, because she was lonely, and would like to have someone to talk to._

_Silence and surprised looks from the mothers._

_And he remembered saying that he would go - he remembered his sister shaking her head and asking him to stay - but he was determined, and he left the next night, carrying his things in a small pack._

_On the first night out of the village, the woman said nothing, and only smiled when he asked her where they were going._

_On the second night, she walked slowly, and would not smile._

_On the third night, she_ changed _._

_Gone the beautiful smile, gone the kind and generous face. Wild blood-red eyes. Fingers as cold and as sharp-edged as knives. Her teeth meeting in his neck, and the world going dark as she drank his blood._

Steve was struggling, trying to shake his head. Reluctantly James let him go.

James said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Steve asked. He sounded angry. “What a horrible woman she was.”

“She needed to survive,” James said. “And now, what she did is what I do. I have to survive, and the only way I can do that is by drinking blood.”

“There are other ways of doing that now,” Steve said, and pointed to the bag that had contained the pouches of blood. “You don’t have to kill.”

James said nothing.

The clock chimed four times.

Steve started, yawned, and said, “Excuse me.”

“You need to rest,” James told him.

“Yes,” Steve said. “I think I should go back.”

For some reason, that didn’t sound right. “Do you want to stay? Here?”

Steve blinked. “Is that okay with you?”

“I would not have asked if it were not.”

A blush and a smile. Steve smiled so easily. “No, I guess not. Um, where do I go?”

James climbed out of the bathtub. He hadn’t had enough blood, so his movements were slow, but if he was going to rest, he wasn’t going to worry.

A hand wrapped around his. He looked at Steve.

Steve’s smile faded away. “I - ”

James held on tightly, and said, “Come,” and when he moved he didn’t relinquish Steve’s hand.

It was the same room in which Steve had sketched him. The bed was only pristine until James lay down and dragged Steve onto the pillows after him.

“I wondered why it didn’t get warmer in my blankets,” Steve said, after a moment. 

“You mean, when I was holding you,” James said. 

Steve nodded. 

They were lying on their sides, facing each other, and James thought that he might have been leaning in Steve’s direction, or that Steve was leaning in his. Just a breath away from touching, although in this case only one of them was doing the breathing.

“Should I be afraid of you?” Steve asked, after a moment.

“Yes. Should we not be friends?” he returned.

A slight, surprised flush in Steve’s face. “I didn’t think you were the type to have friends.”

James gave him a tiny smile. “I haven’t thought about having friends for a long time.”

“Because people are tricky.”

“And so are my kind.”

Steve opened his mouth to answer, but James watched him yawn instead.

“Sleep, Steve,” he said.

A rustle on the pillows. The beginnings of a frown between Steve’s eyebrows.

Then James watched as Steve inched closer and - kissed him. 

A soft touch to his forehead.

“Good night,” Steve said, and closed his eyes.

Just before James followed suit he took Steve’s hand once again, and pressed it to the place where his heart used to beat.

He could get used to a night like the one that had just passed, though perhaps without the hunger next time.

He could get used to the presence of Steve, to the life in him, to the light he carried in his eyes and in his hands.

But could Steve stay with him? 

Was he allowed to want the soft spaces between Steve’s quiet breaths, or the charcoal smudges on his knuckles?

Could he keep the complicated expressions on Steve’s face for himself?

He was being dragged down into a darkness that was deeper than just sleep, deeper than just being alone.

He kept holding on to Steve, even as he fell in.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to friends and enablers: afrocurl, sirona, maeng, and ihatefishcakes.


End file.
